A War Crime Unpunished

Listening to my radio on the way to work yesterday I recalled the words of the song U2 wrote in response to Bloody Sunday, the British Army's most memorable atrocity in Northern Ireland, in which 13 unarmed civilians were murdered by members of the Paratroop Regiment - "I can't believe the news today"

The motto of the US Justice Department is clearly NOT: "Fiat justitia ruat caelum." (Let justice be done though the heavens fall.)

It seems the US Justice Department brought a case against Blackwater employees who murdered 17 Iraqi civilians that they knew would subsequently be thrown out of court because they used statements that should not have been used. The perpetrators were set free and we are left with only two conclusions to draw: the US Justice Department is incompetent enough to inadvertently make such an error, or the US Department of Justice is evil enough to deliberately make such an error. Either way, it is not good news and one can only imagine what it will do for recruitment into radical militias and terrorist groups.

The Iraqi people, who are aware that no one has bothered to carry out an accurate account of their civilian dead since the invasion began, have now been reminded of the real value attributed to the lives of 17 of their countrymen, countrywomen and of course children.

We have also seen that the CIA and other agencies allowed a known radicalized Muslim who had training in Yemen onto an American-bound flight carrying a bomb.

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